Edinburgh Festival will look north to feature series of concerts in revived Leith Theatre
A MAJOR series of gigs in the Leith Theatre, performances with conductor Sir Simon Rattle and choreographer and dancer Akram Khan, a trial run of a revival of an ancient Scottish play, and a free opening event mark the 2018 Edinburgh International Festival programme.
This year’s Festival (EIF) is making a major move to the north of the city, with a series of alternative music concerts at the Leith Theatre, the Festival’s first visit by to the venue in 30 years.
Marking an increasing focus on new and contemporary music, the 2018 EIF will stage concerts, events and gigs at the theatre, which is being revamped to become once again a major platform for music and the arts. It will stage a season at the EIF, Light on the Shore, and will include Mogwai, Django Django, Karine Polwart, Lau, Neu! Reekie!, Hidden Door and Celtic Connections, with a full line-up announced in May.
Scottish artists and ensembles featured in the EIF programme, from August 3 to 27, include the Dunedin Consort, Hebrides Ensemble, Nicola Benedetti, Stewart Laing and Pamela Carter, and David Greig.
There is also a presentation of the 16th century play Ane
Satyre of the Thrie Estates, by Sir David Lindsay, directed by Joe Douglas, a work performed at the 1948 Festival.
The “workshop” presentation could go on to be a full scale work in coming years, the festival’s director, Fergus Linehan, said.
The festival also features Scotland’s national orchestras – the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and rising star mezzo soprano, Catriona Morison.
The programme features a series of notable names from the cultural world, including Sir Simon Rattle, the soprano Christine Goerke and violinist Nicola Benedetti, leading choreographers Akram Khan and Wayne Mcgregor, and acclaimed director Peter Brook.
There are new plays directed Katie Mitchell and Geoff Sobelle, the former, the play La Maladie de la Mort, which comes with a warning about explicit onstage sexual imagery.
There will also be a staging of Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett, by Irish company Druid, directed by Gary Hynes. Overall the festival features 2,750 artists from 31 countries. It will once again open with a free but ticketed public performance, this time staged outside the Usher Hall, entitled Five Telegrams, and will feature the music of Anna Meredith.
The work will also open the BBC Proms on July 13.
Mr Linehan, who has extended his contract as artistic director to 2022, said: “We are going back to Leith. We have this robust programme in the Usher Hall, and ... at the Queen’s Hall ... and those have been built in over the last 70-odd years but we sense there is a need for a home for another seam of programming.”